


i was there to watch you leave

by superstarrgirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, and family moments as always, big sister!emma, broken-hearted!emma, broken-hearted!killian, it's a happy ending which is something i really never write, kinda sad too but it gets better, this is really really long and i'm really happy with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 19:39:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2162688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superstarrgirl/pseuds/superstarrgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'To Emma, Killian tastes of happy endings</p>
<p>To Killian, Emma tastes of home.' </p>
<p>Or, <br/>Killian returns to Storybrooke seeking forgiveness from a girl who knows only too well what it feels like to be abandoned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i was there to watch you leave

**Author's Note:**

> I mean, it took me a solid 2 weeks to finally finish this damn story, and the ending wasn't really what i had planned, but it seemed as good a way to end it as any. I listened to a lot of 'The Last Time' by Taylor Swift ft. Gary Lightbody, hence the title reference. I do really like this story and I like the way it finished if I'm being honest. Tell me what you guys think.

Emma’s working on her third cup of coffee, typing something furiously on her laptop, when the door to Granny’s Diner swings open. The bell tinkers softly and a gush of snow and bitter wind rushes past Emma’s ear. She doesn’t look up from where she’s typing – this paper is due in _two hours_ , it has to be finished.

She reaches around her laptop to grab her cup of coffee, lifting it to her lips, when all of a sudden she stops. In her peripheral, she sees a tall man with black hair and eyes as blue as the ocean he so adores. Her heart stops. 

_No, no_ , she thinks, panicked, glancing around for the nearest escape route. The front door would walk just by him; the back door is too far away. She’s stuck. Almost subconsciously, she draws closer to the wall and turns her back to the counter where he’s standing, ordering something in that beautiful, lilted accent of his. _Shut up brain_ , Emma hisses to herself. _He might not even notice I’m here_.

For a moment, it seems that he won’t see her, but then someone’s sliding into the old plastic-covered booth across from her and she can practically smell the ocean on him.

“Hi there, Swan.” He says with a stupid smile on his face. She tries to remind herself to breathe as she looks over at him, almost losing the barely-there control she’s got over herself.

He looks good – tousled black hair, eyes wide and happy, tall and tanned. He’s wearing one of her favorite shirts of his – an old band shirt that she lent him, one of Neal’s old ones – underneath a heavy winter coat. His cheeks and nose are a rosy pink color; the smile on his face is so wide and real and _no this is not happening she is not going to hurt herself like this_.

Reluctantly, she closes the lid of her laptop and returns the smile, though hers isn’t as real or as happy. “Hello Killian.” She responds. Her chest constricts at those simple words. “What are you doing back in Storybrooke?”

“Oh, visiting some old friends, checking out the beautiful scenery, trying to find my hand. The usual.” He chuckles lowly, holding up his left arm where the hook sits, as though she could somehow forget his decapitated extremity. He’s trying to make her laugh, but all she can manage is a very tight-lipped smile. Anything else and she thinks she might cry.

“Well, welcome back to town.” Emma manages, forcing as much kindness into her words. “It hasn’t really changed since you left, to be quite honest.”

Those cerulean blue eyes survey her, finally rising to meet her green ones, and she knows he can see the fear shining through clear as day. “No, but the people certainly have.” Killian murmurs, leaning in across the table.

Emma grabs her laptop and her handbag, taking that as a cue to leave. She practically leaps to her feet, shoving her coat on as she does. “Well, it was wonderful seeing you,” she says in a rush, pushing her gloves onto her hands, “but I have to go pick Henry up from the bus stop. See you later, Killian!” And then she’s dashing out the door, hair flying behind her and leaving Killian staring at an empty booth, looking just as lost as she feels.

XxXx

It had happened almost overnight, the deterioration of Emma and Killian’s relationship. One day they were fine, and before anybody had any idea of what was going on, Killian was packing up the few belongings he had and driving out of town.

“It just didn’t work out.” Had been Emma’s stock-standard response for three months whenever anybody asked about the Captain’s whereabouts or what had happened. “We just weren’t meant to be together, I suppose. 

Killian rented himself an apartment in Boston, burned every photo of Emma Swan and tried to move on with his life. As if Emma Swan were a girl you could move on from.

Emma had kept going for as long as she could – loved Henry with all she had, visited her parents and her little brother every night. Life moved on, everyone in town moved on, but Emma stayed stuck right where she was when nobody could see. She fell apart slowly, and though she’d never admit it, there was only one person she wanted to fix her. 

Killian found himself kicked out of three different jobs and at a different bar every night, trying to drink away the pain of the woman he had left behind.

One night, Emma stumbled into her parents’ apartment, drunk as all hell, and had crawled into bed with her parents like a little girl. “He left me.” She had sobbed into her father’s chest, tears streaming down her cheeks and her chest constricting at the memory of him driving out of town. “He left me, just like everybody else did. He abandoned me. 

“Oh, Emma.” Mary Margaret had murmured, curling against her daughter’s back, pushing tear-soaked hair out of her daughter’s eyes. “He’ll come back, he will.” The thought of him returning after everything they had said to each other, after words sharp as knives were hurled at each other, just made her cry harder. 

Killian didn’t come back for almost a year, and it gave Emma enough time to move on, but not to forget. Because Killian Jones is not a man you forget.

XxXx

The next day when Emma walks into Granny’s Diner, it’s to a well-dressed pirate sitting in her booth. She glances around for another seat, but every other spot is filled. “Really?” She hisses, sliding into the seat. “This is all you’ve got?”

Killian gives her a mischievous smile as Ruby places two mugs of coffee in front of them. “Thanks, Rubes.” Emma smiles, tight-lipped.

He eyes her mug suspiciously then says, “You don’t drink coffee.” 

“Of course I do.” She answers snarkily, lifting the mug to her lips and taking a long drink as if to prove a point. He watches the movement, entranced, and she can see his chest rise and fall raggedly. Oh, she’s well aware of what she’s doing. After a moment, he leans back in his seat, one arm resting on the upholstery.

“So how have you been?” He questions, looking genuinely interested. Something stirs inside Emma, alarm bells flashing.

“Why do you care?” Is her response, cold and calculating. He rolls his eyes and leans closer.

“C’mon, Swan. Can’t we at least _try_ to be civil?”

Very slowly, Emma lowers the mug and crosses her arms over her chest, staring into the eyes she used to adore, but now all she sees is a liar. A man who left her when she needed him most. “No, we can’t.” She spits out. “You left me, Killian. You just drove out of town and didn’t come back and now that you’re here you think I’m going to leap into your arms and tell you how much I’ve missed you? Well, guess what. I didn’t miss you at all – none of us did.” Okay, that might have been a little harsh. Hurt flashes across his face for a moment, but Emma feels no remorse for what she said. She stopped feeling remorse a long time ago.

“I hate to remind you, but it’s not like I was the only one who had a hand in ruining our relationship. All you did was want and shut out, want and shut out. You expected me to give you the world and never gave anything in return.” Killian’s voice is low and dangerous, a silent warning that she chooses to ignore. 

“How _dare_ you?” Emma growls, eyes blown wide. “How _dare_ you tell me that I never gave you anything? I gave you my whole world, Killian. I let you in, I trusted you, I gave you everything I had, and you left me. You promised me you’d stay, that you’d never hurt me like Neal did. But you’re just like Neal. And you will always be just like Neal – a liar.” She grabs a handful of one-dollar bills from her bag and slams them on the table, gathering her things. “You abandoned me, just like everyone else in my life, and if you think you can sit there and tell me that it was _my fault_ you left, then you’re sadly mistaken.” Emma jams her coat on and slams the door open, not even bothering to say goodbye to Ruby or Granny. She just needs to get out of there, away from Killian.

But the man’s stubborn, and he follows her out into the windy Maine weather. “Swan, would you please just listen to me? I came here to apologize!” He shouts after her.

Emma spins and advances on him so fast she’s like a vision. “You – do – not – get – to – apologize.” She snarls, emphasizing each word with a poke to his chest. He backs up, fear shining through his eyes. She’s mad, and when Emma Swan is mad she’s either soft and dangerous or just terrifying. “I don’t give a fuck why you came here! All I care about is that you left me after I gave you everything and you have the nerve – the fucking _nerve_ – to stand there and tell me I never gave you anything? Who the fuck do you think you are?” She’s screaming now, chest heaving as she backs him into the wall of Granny’s, so close to him she can count the colors in his eyes. “I trusted you, I let you in. I showed you parts of me that I never showed anybody. I trusted you to stay, I trusted you to love me. And you didn’t. When things got rough, you ran – when things didn’t turn out the way you wanted them, you ran. You’re no different to any of the other douches I’ve dated. You’re no different to anyone else in my life that’s left me. And I’m never going to make the same mistake again. I will never trust you again.” She stands in front of him, breathing heavily, and then she turns and walks away.

In her car, with the doors locked, Emma puts her head on the steering wheel and just –

Breaks. 

XxXx

“Mom? Dad?” Emma calls as she shoves her shoulder against her parents’ apartment door. It jams for a moment but then swings open, revealing her mother, her father, her little brother and –

Even here she can’t catch a break.

Killian’s sitting at a stool next to the counter, nursing a cup of hot coffee and looking very rumpled. For a week Emma had been so careful to avoid him – after her breakdown in the car she was almost sure she would never be able to face him again. And she thought she was safe – yet here he is, sitting in her old apartment talking to her parents.

“EMMA!” Five-year-old Neal shrieks, racing up to her. She bends down and grabs him, swooping him into her arms.

“Well hey there, little man!” Emma laughs, kissing his cheek as she swings him around so he’s clutching onto her back. “Hi mom, hi dad.” She gives her parents kisses and then turns coldly to Killian. “Hello Killian.”

He raises a hand in greeting, not even looking up from his coffee, but she can see his ears are a bright pink. “Emma.”

A moment of awkwardness fills the space in the apartment, and then Mary Margaret turns to Emma. “We invited Killian to stay for dinner – it’s been such a long time that we feel like we hardly know him anymore.” The Charmings give him kind smiles, and Emma’s jaw twitches.

“Moving to New York for a year will do that, I’ve found.” Emma mutters, dropping Neal from her shoulders and her mother smacks her arm, staring at her daughter in mortification. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Killian tense, and a weird pang of something shoots through her body. No, she tells herself sternly. You won’t regret anything about this man.

“Emma, Emma!” Neal tugs on Emma’s sweater, and Emma turns a much kinder gaze to her little brother, bending down so she’s at eye-level. “Can I show you my new toy?”

“Of course, kid.” He slips his tiny hand into hers and tugs her along behind him to his playroom. “You can sit there.” He tells her, pointing at a little chair that Emma knows she will probably break if she even puts an ounce of pressure on it. 

“How about I sit on the ground?” Emma suggests, and Neal hesitates for a moment but then shrugs, digging through a drawer to try and find whatever it is he wants to show her. After a moment, he turns up victorious – out of the drawer he pulls a stack of papers, a handful of markers and a fancy contraption that rattles when he pulls it out. “What on earth is that?” Emma asks as he lays the objects in front of her.

“My new toy – Aunt Regina bought it for me.” He looks so proud of it, and though Emma has no idea what it is she feels pride bubble inside of her too.

“Come show me how it works.” She offers, pulling on his wrist. He settles himself on her lap and pulls the paper, the markers and the contraption closer. Her arms wind around his waist as she leans around him to see what he’s doing.

He picks out a red marker, slides a piece of paper into a little slot and starts to explain. “You put the marker in here and then you press this button and then you…” He rambles on, pointing out different nobs and buttons, but Emma gets distracted by the body standing in the door way, wearing figure-hugging jeans and a long-sleeved sweater, his hair messed. There’s a small smile on his face, a smug smile that Emma can just _sense_. Oh you sneaky bastard, Emma thinks to herself, turning her back completely to him and focusing instead on what her little brother is showing her.

It turns out that Neal’s fancy machine draws patterns for you with a marker, and then you can color in the design with whatever you like. Right as the machine finishes its drawing, Mary Margaret calls everybody for dinner and Neal scrambles off his sister’s lap, rushing straight past Killian in his haste to get to the food.

Very slowly, agonizingly so, Emma pulls herself to her feet and is met with a smug-looking Killian Jones, grinning at her from the doorway. “It’s dinner time.” She tells him tersely, crossing her arms over her chest. Something flickers in his eyes, and his eyes go soft and gentle.

“You’re quite good with the little lad, I must say, Swan.” He grins, but the teasing is absent from his voice. A weird sensation crawls up Emma’s throat and her heart constricts, but she pushes the walls up. 

“Well, now that I’ve got your approval of how I treat my little brother I can get on with my life, can’t I.” She pushes past him, shoving him into the doorframe as she does.

“Oh for god’s sake, what is it you want from me, Emma?” Killian demands, tone pleading and confused. “I’ve done everything in my power to try and apologize, to make you understand, and you keep shutting me out!” 

Emma turns to face him, suddenly not so angry but just tired. “There is nothing to understand, Killian.” She sighs, rubbing her temples. “You left and that’s it. That’s the story. Nothing else. And I get it.”

“Then what do you want me to say? What do you want me to tell you?” She can see it in his eyes that he’s tired too, tired of this game, this hurting each other over and over and over again.

“I want you to tell me why you left. I want you to tell me why you abandoned me, my mother, my father, my _kid_. I want you to give me a good reason why you just skipped town and never called. I want you to tell me why you thought it was a good reason to leave me and my child behind – why you thought you could just leave Henry. He trusted you, he needed you. I trusted you, I needed you. But you left. That’s what I want you to tell me. I want you to tell me why you disappeared without a trace.” She stares at him patiently, her heart hammering in her chest. When he doesn’t say anything, when he just stares at her with his mouth open and eyes wide, something inside of her breaks. She gives him a sad and broken smile. “That’s what I thought.”

And then she walks away, hoping he doesn’t notice the way her shoulders collapse as a tear slides down her cheek.

XxXx

It’s three in the goddamn morning and someone is banging on Emma’s door. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” She calls softly, tying her bathrobe around her as she weaves through the hallway. On her way to the front door she stumbles on a pair of Henry’s shoes and reminds herself to beat him with the perpetrators, but all thoughts of shoes are pushed from her mind when she opens the door.

Killian Jones, in black jeans and a black jacket, is standing at her front door. 

She almost shuts it on him, but he sticks his hook in just before she can manage it. She sighs heavily, peering around the wood at him. “What do you want, Jones. It’s 3 in the morning, I really don’t feel like talking.”

“Then don’t.” He breathes heavily. “Just listen.” She really doesn’t feel like doing that either, but she eventually submits and nods, crossing her arms and leaning against the doorjamb.

Killian breathes in deeply, and then talks. “I left because I was afraid, I left because you were a hurricane and I was the ocean, I left because I couldn’t bear to be broken by someone like you, I couldn’t bear to _break_ someone like you who has a universe inside of them. I couldn’t hurt you like that, but I did anyway. I left because I was so scared of letting anybody see inside of me, see how haunted I was, see how the past had damaged me that instead of letting you in like you had done with me, I shut you out and blamed you. I fought wars with myself every day while I was gone, I dreamed of coming back but knew you would never have me, because how could someone as wild and dangerous as you love someone like me? How could the sun love the moon without taking a piece of that darkness herself? I couldn’t do that to you, but now I see I’ve done much worse – I’ve broken your trust, I’ve broken the piece of you that you gave me. I’ve hurt you and in the process hurt myself, and I know I can’t ever undo what I’ve done because a year of longing doesn’t mean a year of loving. I know you can’t forgive me, and I would never ask you to, but I just want you to know I’m sorry. I just want you to know that for a year I was plagued by what I did, I was haunted by your ghost, I was haunted by the past and haunted by the future I could have had with you. I see now that we can’t have a future, not anymore. Not after the hurt and pain I’ve caused you and your family. So I’m sorry – I just needed you to know that before anything else.”

And then he’s gone, leaving Emma with her jaw hanging open staring at the spot where he had been.

But then she’s jamming her feet into a pair of boots and shoving on a jacket, racing after the disappearing silhouette, feet flying hard and fast on the steps. “Killian! Killian, wait!”

She chases him down the street, like some lovesick teenager, and when she finally catches up to him she grabs his arm so hard and so fast he doesn’t have time to slow down before he’s crushed against her chest.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me again.” Emma hisses, low and throaty and desperate. His eyes are wide and confused but Gods they’re so close and he smells like the ocean and forgiveness and letting go and _home_ , she just wants to go _home._

“Swan…” Killian breathes in as much desperation as her, but she shakes her head sharply.

“I get it now, I get why you left.” She says, fingers somehow winding their way around the lapels of his coat. “You left because you were scared – you were falling too fast and you were still holding onto the idea that I was going to leave you like your mom and Milah. You didn’t want to get hurt, and you didn’t want to hurt me either.” She’s so close to him their noses are touching. “And I was so hurt when you left – I cried myself to sleep, I waited for you to come back. I held onto you like nothing I’ve ever held onto before, because I knew you loved me, and I know you still do. I hated you, but I… I hated myself anymore.” A single tear tracks down Emma’s cheek and she wipes it away with a bitter laugh. “I hated myself for believing that you could love someone as damaged as me. I hated myself for believing that you could love an orphan, because nobody could ever love an orphan.”

Her words dig into Killian, and he sighs out a soft and pained, “Emma.”

She shakes her head again, determined to press forward because she has to get this out now, she has to. “But I know now that you tried to move on like I did, but you failed. You couldn’t do it, and that’s why you’re back. And I’m not going to apologize for the last few days because God knows you deserved it.” He chuckles, but there’s no humor. “But the fact that you came back, even now, even here, proves to me that you couldn’t move on.”

“I didn’t.” Killian whispers, chest rising and falling raggedly. “I never stopped loving you.” 

Something tingles in Emma’s fingers and spreads outwards, warms her from head to toe and though she waits for the imminent panic to set in, it never does. The smile that spreads from ear to ear is enough to put the sun to shame. “Good.” She says breathlessly, and then they’re kissing like their lives depend on it.

He wraps his hook around her waist and drags her as close as possible, his other hand running through her hair, relishing the touch and feel of it. Gods he’s missed the way this woman makes him feel, how she made him a better man, gave him a reason to fight. Emma cups his jaw in her hand, thumbing over the stubble and playing with the hair at the nape of his neck.

Finally she pulls off from him to meet his gaze, green eyes searching his. “You ever leave me or my son again,” She warns him softly. “And I’ll kick your ass back to the Enchanted Forest.”

Killian laughs and nuzzles at her neck, pushing the hair aside. He peppers light kisses up the side of her neck and her jaw, kisses her nose and the sides of her mouth before he finally whispers back, “I’m not going anywhere, Princess.”

When he kisses her again, she tastes the truth on his tongue. He tastes of the ocean and hot chocolate and coffee and warm fires and starting over and family and how this should have all ended. He tastes of the happy ending she’s always wanted.

To Killian, Emma tastes of home.


End file.
